


calmly and rhythmically run

by timetrees



Category: Marvel (Comics), Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Backstory, Drug Use, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 00:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17193212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetrees/pseuds/timetrees
Summary: Everything happened at once.Static in the air, a rumbling sound, cut-off yells and the sound of Tommy’s own heart beating too too fast. Tommy’s hand hit the wall of the school and he felt himself fly back as the whole building shook in slow-motion and fell apart into the air, debris scattering, people screaming, tears obstructing his vision and–





	calmly and rhythmically run

**Author's Note:**

> i'll be honest i wrote this entire thing in the middle of the night on christmas eve and didn't really proofread it. there was meant to be more but i kinda lost it

Tommy moved between his parent’s houses inconsistently. He’d spend a year with his mom. He’d spent a month with his dad. He’d spent three months with his mom. He’d spent six with his dad. Over and over again.

They fought over him, but not in the way you might think. Mary’d suffered postpartum depression after having him, which led to her drug use, which partially led to her divorce, and some days she could barely stand to look at him. She’d told him that, once, when she was high on Dayquil and lack of sleep and barely cognizant of what she was saying. He didn’t want to blame her.

Frank, who’d chased after Mary since the day they met, blamed Tommy for the divorce, and it didn’t help that he didn’t believe Tommy was his. White hair, toxic green eyes – even his skin was darker than Frank expected.

Neither of them could deal with caring for him for too long.

Age five. Tommy watched his mother sink into the sofa and close her eyes, dark eyelashes matted with days of unwashed mascara. He watched his father boredly click on the news, glance over at his wife and sigh. Then he watched the TV.

The news showed a clip of a fight between the Avengers and some villains that didn’t make it in Tommy’s memory. It switched to an interview from at the scene – a reporter woman calling out to the Avengers for a comment.

Quicksilver appeared out of nowhere. He had white hair and green eyes and an accent that struck the child Tommy, who’d only ever lived in New Jersey, as weird. It must’ve been the first time Frank Shepherd had seen the speedster.

Frank said, “What the fuck?”

Years later, Tommy wouldn’t be sure if Frank thought that Mary had somehow scored with the goddamn Quicksilver or if he’d just recognized too early that his son was a mutant, but it didn’t matter in the end. After two months of fighting, Mary filed for divorce.

Frank didn’t fight for his marriage, but he wasn’t happy about it, either. He moved out within a week to a rundown place that barely passed inspection. He didn’t keep a room for Tommy in the beginning, though Mary had made it clear that he was meant to take some responsibility for his spawn.

Age nine. Tommy’s elementary school was, as always, worried about him. One night, Mrs. Jacobs phoned home to Mary. Tommy watched and listened to that, too, though Mary didn’t speak for much of the conversation. She mostly sighed, but Tommy still remembered a few of the things she said.

The first: “I don’t want him tested. I don’t want that on his permanent record.”

The second: “I don’t know what that it. He’s always been active.”

Mrs. Jacobs asked him, the day after, if he’d ever been asked about something called ‘ADHD’ or ‘autism’. Tommy only knew the second term from schoolground bullying, and, tripping over his words, he denied everything.

Frank didn’t believe that Tommy was his son, but even so, he was offended at the notion that a kid he raised could be disabled, and he strong-armed Mary into changing schools, even though the new school was farther away and poorer than its predecessors.

Apparently Frank didn’t know that Tommy’d been in and out of special ed for years already. Neither Mary nor Tommy informed him.

At age eleven Tommy started middle school at the same school he’d been transferred to. His school was alternative and very poor, filled with dyed-hair teens and lackluster teachers and drug dealer students, and it was Tommy’s favorite school yet.

A girl in his class – her name might have been Elisha – leaned over the empty seat between her and Tommy and whispered, “Are you the mutie kid?”

Tommy looked up from his notebook doodles. One strand of his curly white hair fell out of place and down onto his forehead. He pushed it back up.

“What?” he said. He’d heard the word before, of course; he wasn’t an idiot. He didn’t think he really looked like a mutant – not that there was one way for a mutant to look – but the kids in his school seemed to think so. It didn’t help that he looked like he could be related to Quicksilver.

Stupid fucking Quicksilver. The Scarlet Witch was better, anyway.

“No offense,” Elisha said. “I don’t have anything against mutants. But are you one? What’s your, uh… thing?”

“I don’t have a thing,” Tommy said.

“Thomas!” called his math teacher. “No talking in class. Do it again and I’ll write you up.”

It was an empty threat. The school couldn’t pay their teachers to work overtime for detention. At least that was what everyone said; it was possible they were just too lazy.

“She was talking first,” Tommy said, incredulously, like an idiot.

The teacher rolled his eyes. “Don’t talk back,” he said, and continued on with the lesson.

Age twelve. Tommy was invited to an seventh grader named Brock’s thirteenth birthday party. Mary seemed pleased to hear this, and she gave him five dollars to buy a present for Brock.

Brock’s girlfriend Nia, who was the same age as Tommy, opened the door.

“Oh, hey, Tommy,” she said. “We’re all in the basement. Come on down.”

The basement was cold and a little wet, but Brock’s herd of friends were gathered around in a circle like it was nothing. Tommy sat awkwardly a ways away from the group. Many of the partygoers were older than him and most he didn’t recognize.

“Tommy,” Brock said. “Have you smoked weed before?”

Tommy said, “No.”

“Drank?” Brock asked.

“Nah,” Tommy said.

Nia sat beside him and reached into the center of the circle. In it sat an assortment of drug and alcohol paraphernalia, including two beer bottles, a bong, and a bag of weed.

“Fun,” Tommy said.

Nothing much happened at that party. Tommy smoked weed and failed to get drunk. In the middle of the night, one of Brock’s friends had sex with one of the girls in another room and Tommy was forced to listen by way of insomnia.

He forgot to give Brock the five dollars, but Brock never asked for a present. A few weeks later, Tommy joined in on another get together and quickly got situated with the almost-teen crowd in Springfield, New Jersey. He made sort-of friends with the high schoolers and didn’t fit in, but enjoyed the fun of trying to anyway.

He went to juvie the first time some months later.

When Tommy was thirteen years old, he woke up early in the morning for the first time in a long time. His bed was a mess and there was a half-eaten candy bar on the floor, which he picked up and finished.

He left his room and found his father in the living room, watching the television with an absent look on his face. He wasn’t moving and he didn’t react to Tommy coming in. Tommy assumed he was on drugs and looked at the TV to see if anything interesting was going on there.

The TV seemed to be paused.

Tommy went to the kitchen to make something to eat. By something he meant ramen, but when he pressed the timer on the oven and it switched from 6:33 AM to 3:00 minutes left, it froze.

“The fuck,” Tommy said blearily. When he took his hand from the pot and entered in the timer again, the bubbling noises from the boiling water stopped coming.

“What the fuck,” Tommy said. He went back to the living room.

“Dad?” he asked cautiously.

His dad had moved since when Tommy’d last seen him – now he was staring at where Tommy had exited the room, a strange look on his face. It was confusion, maybe, or anger; Tommy couldn’t tell.

But Frank didn’t move.

Incredibly creeped out, Tommy left the room again. In the kitchen, the oven timer said 3:33.

“Fuck!” he yelled, too loudly. He didn’t even live in New York; things like this weren’t supposed to happen to him.

He sat in the corner of the living room with his knees to his chest and his arms around himself and hyperventilated until he heard the TV again. Soon after, he heard his dad stand up and move himself to Tommy’s bubble of a panic attack.

Frank grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him out of his own arms.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Frank said.

Tommy struggled out of his grasp. “I don’t know!” he said instinctively. The time on Frank’s watch said 6:35.

“You’re a mutant,” Frank said. “I knew it. I goddamn knew it.”

“I’m not,” Tommy said, or tried to say. His mouth was dry and his tongue was numb.

“You have that superspeed power,” Frank said. “I should have known. Mary…” he trailed off, clenching his teeth furiously, but quickly regained his composure. “Get out of my house.”

Tommy didn’t argue.

He didn’t tell Mary about what happened, either. He found her still in bed by the time he got to her house – it was 6:52 – and stood in the doorway watching her for far too long.

Her alarm went off at 7:00. Mary groaned and tried to snooze it, but ended up knocking it off the nightstand.

“Ugh,” she said, and reached over the bed to pick it up. She saw him as she retrieved it, and she made a noise that told Tommy she was much too tired to want to see him right then. “Thomas?”

He swallowed. “Hi, Mom,” he said.

She sighed and turned off the alarm. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “It’s early.”

“Dad’s girlfriend came over,” Tommy lied. “Kicked me out for a while.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “Of course,” she said. She didn't like Frank's girlfriend. “Fine. Stay here a while.”

Her tone was short, and she seemed to realize this, because she added, “You should be going to school soon. But I’ll get food for us for dinner, okay? I haven’t seen you in months.”

By food she meant McDonalds, which was about half of Tommy’s diet.

“Okay,” he said, and left at a normal speed.

Fourteen years old. He was in juvie again, after some cops found him and some other kids in his high school breaking into an abandoned Rite-Aid. The other kids got community service; Tommy got three months locked up.

He met a girl there – Lisa Molinari. She was cool, if weird, and they weren’t allowed to get too close to each other, but with some reckless use of his speed, they managed it. After two months, she got out, and he spent the next month alone.

Age fifteen. Tommy almost got arrested at a party thrown by another high school. There were dozens and dozens of teens at the party, and a few adults, and a guy selling alcohol who Tommy later found out was an arms dealer as well. Countless beer cans were littered in the field of the park. Tommy tripped over a few.

Some kids got in a fight over something and fists went flying – voices raised and cameras flashed and soon, there was a siren sounding and blue light flaring into the grass. Police.

“Fuck the police!” someone yelled, and everyone – including Tommy – cheered. They still scattered, though, even as the cops came out of their cars and started yelling.

Tommy didn’t want to go back to juvie.

A girl – Nia, he remembered – caught his eye and mouthed something. Tommy couldn’t read lips.

He ran, and not the normal way, and everyone saw it.

The next day at school, there were whispers. Too many whispers, and they were all about him. He heard the words _superspeed_ and _mutant_ and _fuckin’ awesome party, did you hear Allen Thicker got arrested?_

“Tommy,” Elisha from his sixth grade math class said. “You _are_ a mutant. I totally called it, like, years ago, didn’t I?”

Tommy pulled his hood down and tugged it around his face. He walked – not ran – away.

“Shepherd!” called a teenage boy who had definitely not been to the party. Nobody liked him because he was trying to make calling people by their last names a thing again, and also because he had bad taste in glasses. “Fuck! I heard you, like, teleported away from the cops at that rager last night!”

“Shut up, man,” Tommy said. “Get a life.”

Throughout the entire first half of the day, people pointed and gossiped and sometimes even came up to talk to him directly. A teacher even pulled him aside after class and told him that he didn’t condone underage drinking, but he _was_ a mutant ally.

Lunchtime and recess. Tommy didn’t want and couldn’t afford the lunch provided by the school, so he sat against the wall of the school and ate an energy bar. His legs stuck out in the drizzling rain and he watched, tired, as the drops slid off his boots.

“Tommy,” someone said.

Tommy continued to stare at his boots.

“I told you, Brock,” a girl said. “He’s got a lot, like, a lot of people coming onto him about this shit, give it a day–”

“Don’t say coming onto him, Nia,” Brock said. “You’re making it sound gay. Hey, Thomas. Are you for real a mutie?”

Tommy’s face twitched. He didn’t move.

Brock knelt down next to him and grabbed Tommy by the collar of his shirt. “I’m talking to you,” he said. “Have you been a mutant all this time?”

“Fuck off,” Tommy said. “I didn’t know you were a bigot, Brock.”

“I’m not a bigot,” Brock said. “But man, I knew something was up with you. I mean, I just thought you were fucked up in the head like everyone said, you know, autism, or something, but… a gene-freak. Wow.”

“Really interesting how you’re calling me that and still denying you’re an asshole,” Tommy said, or tried to say. Time was slowing down. Time was slowing down. Time was…

He snapped back to it.

“Shut up,” Brock said. “You’re lucky I don’t turn you in to the police.”

“You can’t be arrested for being a mutant,” Tommy said, though he was sure there was legal precedent. His head hurt. “Get off me. I’ll–” he froze.

Brock leaned away, but his face turned cold. “You’ll…?” he prompted. “Are you threatening me? We’re friends, Tommy.”

Tommy stood up and took a step away. Brock pushed him back onto the wall.

“I’m trying to be supportive,” Brock said. “For real. What’s wrong with you?”

“Leave me alone,” Tommy snapped. “You’re the one being an asshole. Everyone knows you’ve wanted to have superpowers since you were a kid and that’s why you started huffing paint–”

Brock punched Tommy, which he maybe deserved, but also probably didn’t. Tommy shoved him back and then–

Time slowed down.

Everything happened at once.

Static in the air, a rumbling sound, cut-off yells and the sound of Tommy’s own heart beating too too fast. Tommy’s hand hit the wall of the school and he felt himself fly back as the whole building shook in slow-motion and fell apart into the air, debris scattering, people screaming, tears obstructing his vision and–

Age fifteen. His mom actually hired an attorney for him this time.

“An accident,” he heard the man say, voice going in and out, slow, fast, slow, fast, normal, slow, slow, slow. “Brock Thicker provoked him–”

“Brock Thicker is in a coma,” said someone else.

Tommy slumped in his seat. He could barely listen.

They argued some more, and he couldn’t understand any of it. Something about mutant activation and accidental usage of powers, but Frank Shepherd admitted to the courtroom that they’d first discovered Tommy was a mutant years ago, and nobody brought up the fact that Tommy had never made anything explode before.

Arguing. Not like the kind of arguing Tommy saw from his parents, or from his peers. It was controlled, no yelling voices, no fighting, nothing. He heard some of the details: Brock and four other students were still unconscious; two teachers were dead, one of which had been his favorite teacher, the only one who actually tried to help him. More than a few students were dead.

The judge said, “Guilty,” and Tommy barely heard it.

Juvie. Again.

His father didn’t look him in the eye as he left the courtroom. His mother had her mouth pressed together in a thin line; she caught his eye, but quickly looked away.

They took him to a different detention center than before. It was more equipped for people like him, they said, with an emphasis he wished he didn’t understand. He couldn’t be trusted not to blow up a regular juvie, or escape using his speed.

Maybe he deserved that.

Tommy wasn’t allowed to see other people at all in this juvie. He was supposed to stay in his cell, which had a power dampener. For the first two weeks he was left alone in there, with a meal or two a day passed in without word. He didn’t move at all unless he was retrieving the food.

Twenty meals in, they took him out for the first time.

He was confused but he obeyed. He didn’t even talk back to them.

One of the detention officers – that was what they were, right? – put a collar on him and pressed a button on it. Tommy felt a dull pain, but he didn’t care.

They took him to a room and forced him down onto the floor. They locked his wrists down with a clamp to the ground and pulled the his shirt down so that the back of his neck was exposed.

He almost expected it.

Through the pain, he heard talking, mumbling, scientific and sneering and unaffected by his sobs. He tried not to cry; it didn’t work.

“...want to test his reactions to electrical shocks,” he heard one of them say, and the pain increased. “...next time… see what happens if we let him use some of his…”

He didn’t cry when they put him back in his cell. He just laid with his face pressed into his stiff, uncomfortable bed, and waited for whatever was next.

Weeks passed. More tests. More pain. He heard more of their intentions – they could use him, they said, if they broke him down enough that he obeyed without questioning. If they got him to do whatever they asked for, they could sell him to some military group. No need for bombs if he could make things explode from a safe enough distance.

Sometimes they strapped him down and tested his reactions to certain stimuli. Sometimes they trapped him in a big room and told him to run around as fast as he could so they could measure his speed; when he got to a certain rate, they electrocuted him through his collar and watched as he writhed on the ground for as long as they thought necessary.

Once, they knocked him out and he woke up with a fresh scar on his stomach. He didn’t overhear what they’d done beyond ‘testing’, and he couldn’t make himself care. None of it mattered.

They wanted a weapon. He wanted them to die.

He was so fucking tired of it all.

They fell into a routine. Cell–cell–torture–testing–cell–torture–pain, pain, pain. Tommy hated them more than he’d ever hated anyone.

They were dragging him from his cell to another room, fists so tight around his wrists he thought their fingers would break into his veins. One of the researchers, the youngest of the crew, leaned down to his ear.

“I heard it’s your birthday,” he said. “Happy sixteenth, kid.”

Sixteen years old.

He heard them talk, sometimes. At one point, they took him out to the room and told him to run and, for some odd reason, rejoiced when they found he could still do it. They said something about ‘M-Day’, a mass depowering of mutants in the facility. He was the only mutant left in the building.

He heard them gossip about superheroes, too, like a new Avengers team full of teenagers who could shapeshift and cast spells and grow to different sizes. A team of privileged idiots who thought they could save the world.

Four months later, Tommy was still in juvie. He didn’t know if he could call it that anymore. He didn’t know if this was legal. Maybe it was all a stupid, sick joke that God was playing on him; maybe he’d died in the explosion that vaporized his school. Maybe he’d never existed in the first place.

That would be good.

He thought about bringing the whole place down with him. Maybe he would cooperate, do whatever they wanted when they asked. Not talk back, just take their testing, probing pain. Make them trust him until they decided he was truly theirs.

And then they’d decide they could test his explosive powers. They’d give him his power back bit by bit, just to see if he would snap, and he wouldn’t. He’d become their favorite weapon, favorite mutant toy. They’d learn to trust him.

And as soon as he had enough control, he’d vaporize this hell like he had his school, except this time he wouldn’t survive the process.

But, after six months trapped, when he felt the power dampeners in his cell die down, he was much too tired to do any of that.

His cell block exploded.

There was a mess of smoke and crashing rubble. He heard voices, young ones, not the ones of his torturers. They were talking to each other, calling names, making sure they were all okay. They cared about each other.

 _“Thomas?”_ one of them said.

That was him, wasn’t it?

Tommy said, “Who the hell are you?”

**Author's Note:**

> hmm any thoughts?


End file.
